6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood came, the waters over the earth.

7 Noah with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives boarded the ark to escape the waters of the flood.

8 (Of the clean animals and the animals that are not clean, of the birds and all that creeps along the ground,

9 one pair boarded the ark with Noah, one male and one female, as God had commanded Noah.)

10 Seven days later the waters of the flood appeared on earth.

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, and on the seventeenth day of the month, that very day all the springs of the great deep burst through, and the sluices of heaven opened.

12 And heavy rain fell on earth for forty days and forty nights.

13 That very day Noah and his sons Shem, Ham and Japheth boarded the ark, with Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons,

14 and with them every species of wild animal, every species of cattle, every species of creeping things that creep along the ground, every species of bird, everything that flies, everything with wings.

15 One pair of all that was alive and had the breath of life boarded the ark with Noah,

16 and those that went aboard were a male and female of all that was alive, as God had commanded him. Then Yahweh shut him in.

17 The flood lasted forty days on earth. The waters swelled, lifting the ark until it floated off the ground.

18 The waters rose, swelling higher above the ground, and the ark drifted away over the waters.

19 The waters rose higher and higher above the ground until all the highest mountains under the whole of heaven were submerged.

Bible Resources

The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.